Outsider art in question

Ever since it was forged by Dubuffet in 1945, the term “art brut” has had remarkable success. But what does it cover exactly and how does it distingue itself from concepts that came after it such as singular art - born in 1978 with the exhibition of the Singuliers de l’art-? What place does the “art of the crazy” occupy, that form studied by the pioneer alienists such as Hans Prinzhorn? In the context of an exhibition at Mons in 2015, and through short and comprehensive essays, this bilingual volume touches on these questions of definition, underlines the role of a few major collections and mentions great figures, all of which are not from a far-away past: next to Aloïse, Chaissac or Augustin Lesage, we have indeed Robillard and his wooden rifles, Michel Nedjar and his dolls, Jacques Trovic and his embroideries. Each work with its theme is an opportunity for rediscoveries, like that of Marco Decorpeliada, the inventor of the “schizometer”. To calibrate this original instrument that measures mental disturbance, the author noticed that the three figure codes of the American Psychiatric Association that describe pathologies had a systematic equivalent in Picard frozen foods.

• Outsider art in question, directed by Carine Fol, CFC éditions, 2015, 224 p., €39.